David Byrne on His Fruitful Creative Relationship with Hayley Williams (Exclusive)

Hayley Williams is the reason for it. Maybe for David Byrne, at least.

The prolific singer-songwriter, whose new album Who Is the Sky? releases on Friday, Sept. 5, speaks with PEOPLE about his relationship with the Paramore singer and her impact on his new album. Williams, 36, is featured on Byrne’s upbeat track “What Is the Reason for It?”

Byrne, 73, met Williams when A24 re-released the 1984 film Stop Making Sense in 2023 and 2024.

The film studio “had an idea to invite a number of artists to cover the songs that were in that film. And among the acts they approached was Paramore,” he says over a Zoom call from the music room of his New York apartment.

The band did a cover of the 1983 Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House.” “The Paramore folks and Hayley approached me and said, ‘Well, will you do one of our songs now?’ Which I did.” Byrne covered “Hard Times,” which he said was “a lot of fun to do.” “They liked what I did, what I did with it.”

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Byrne says he and Williams stayed in touch, and he got to see her perform at Madison Square Garden in New York. “She has an extraordinary rapport with her audience. It’s very sincere and very close, which I made note of that,” he says. “I just thought that’s really amazing.”

The former Talking Heads frontman had been so impressed by her, he considered her for Who Is the Sky? track “What Is the Reason for It?” where she is featured in the high-energy track, adding another layer of music for fans to tune in for.

“When we were finishing up the record, the producer Kid Harpoon and I were wondering, ‘Oh, maybe this song, it’s a love song, or at least it’s asking what is love, what it’s about? Why do we do this? Why do other people do it? Do we know anything about it?’ ”

The connection for the album came together easily. “And I knew that she was in town, so I just texted her and said, ‘Do you want to come by and sing on this?’ And she said yes,” he says of Williams. “And she killed it.”

When it comes to songwriting and inspiration, Byrne says he will find it on “the job.” Sometimes the job. If I say something, I’ll jot down just the line sometimes, that might be a title end up being the title of a song. Sometimes it might be the beginning of an idea.”

The musician mentions a story song he wrote about getting a call from a blocked number, something relatable and mundane but only Byrne could give it a whimsical twist. Sadly, it “never turned into anything.”

“I think as we probably all do, I got a call on my phone and it said private number. We’re not going to tell you who this is. This person is not in your contact list.”

He continues: “I wrote a song trying to imagine who it is. Is it a robot? Could it be the woman I loved? I’m not going to pick it up. Should I be suspicious? Should I be open-minded and pick it up? No, no, no. I started working on that and it didn’t go anywhere.”

Byrne also reflects on what he hopes his audience get out of Who Is the Sky?, which is a departure from 2018 album American Utopia. He said the record’s title refers not to a specific utopia, but to a “longing, frustration, aspirations, fears, and hopes regarding what could be possible, what else is possible.”

“There is a longing for possibility— and I have a feeling that is what these songs touch on,” Byrne said in a statement at the time.

With his new album, early feedback has been positive. “The reaction I’ve gotten from people is they said, ‘Oh, we need this right now. This is what we need right now.” Which I take it to mean that it’s an album that’s playful,” says Byrne.

“It’s a lot of joy and all that in the record. And I think people see that as a resistance or a pushback to what they see and what I see is happening in the world. So a lot of things where we’re all divisive and separated from one another, and the record is in some ways a counterforce to that.”

After releasing Who Is the Sky? Byrne embarks on a tour in North America through the end of the year before heading to Australia and Europe in 2026.

Who Is the Sky? is available for preorder.